Digimon: Crest Shift
by Jlgjt
Summary: Repost of series on DeviantArt. DigiDestined and parents alike react to the restoration of the Crest powers.
1. Courage and Light

1. Courage and Light

Yuuko Kamiya hummed to herself as she carefully arranged pieces of instant cookie dough on a baking sheet, opened the oven door and slid the sheet into the oven. She then moved into the living room and sat down to watch what the newsman was saying on TV.

Earlier that day, her two children, Taichi and Hikari, had left in response to an earlier news report of a police chase involving an enemy that had increasingly involved their attention, as well as the attention of their "DigiDestined" friends. Now, having seen their efforts in helping to stop the enemy, she was baking cookies for the "valiant heroes" to enjoy upon their return. It wasn't just the kids participating, though.

Three months previous, at the beginning of the year, she and her husband had been thrown a curveball no parenting manual could possibly have prepared them for. After an apparent hiding campaign for the better part of the year, Tai and Kari had introduced two very unusual and attention-grabbing additions to the family, bizarre talking creatures you couldn't classify either as pets or children. Tai had a little orange T. Rex-like thing called "Agumon", and Kari had a white cat-like thing that could (and usually did) stand on two legs called "Gatomon".  
>At first, Yuuko and her husband were stymied on how to treat the "Digimon partners", as Tai and Kari called them, but gradually on their advice began taking a "hands-off" approach, only directly speaking to either of them whenever Tai or Kari was not in sight (a rare event in any case). And slowly but surely, the mom began to realize she had unexpected celebrity on her hands when the phone rang and a newspaper reporter asked a few questions for her. She also liked the attention she got in public, and her husband got at work, because of suddenly being involved in one of the hottest topics of curiosity ever to sweep Tokyo. When the weight of celebrity got too heavy though, she did wonder how exactly she had managed to end up in the middle of all of it without even trying. As she had said to herself as Kari grew out of her previously sickly state, "Life works in mysterious ways."<p>

A knock at the door told her that the kids had arrived. "Come in guys." she yelled, and the door opened to reveal Tai with Agumon, Kari and Gatomon close behind.

She turned from her position to greet her children with a smile. "I saw you on the TV, and decided you need some cookies to reward my conquering heroes with!" she explained, gesturing to the oven where the cookies were baking.

"Great, Mom. We'll be in my room, just knock when they're ready." Tai replied with a waving gesture as the group hustled into the apartment, leaving the shoes at the door and scuffling their way toward Tai's room.

"OK, dear. Dad's doing overtime at work, so just come out if anyone needs something." mom Yuuko replied, well aware of the need to keep the Digimon as private as circumstances allowed. The last thing she, or her husband, wanted was a mob of admirers crashing in looking for autographs and who-knows-what because the kids were flaunting their public position a little too much. As it was, she already had a few times where she had to turn away persistent fans to keep the peace and quiet.

Yuuko surfed through the channels, only occasionally stopping on a news station to get updates on the recent situation and "monster appearance". At least, the news people had stopped calling the appearance of these Digimon "monster attacks", despite the fact that some looked the same as "monsters" seen in the weird events of summer 1999 and of the holidays just before the enterance of two of those "monsters" into the family. Thanks to a combination of courageous, careful action and a careful PR campaign, the "monsters" were seen less as a public menace and more as a curiosity and protector of the public interest against predatory criminals. Analysts and conspiracy theorists spun stories of government experiments and failed alien invasions, stories she couldn't quite believe. Since Tai and Kari both said they couldn't explain the bond between each of them and their respective partners, the mom was content with whatever they told them was true about those creatures.

Flicking through the channels, the Kamiya mom was suddenly aware of something different than usual going on in Tai's room. Normally, she could hear a medley of talking voices coming from the room: Tai's, Kari's, the modestly sweet-hearted voice of Agumon and the "sugar and spice" feline attitude of Gatomon. But this time the medley of voices was different; in with Tai's and Kari's voices were a deep, very husky kind of voice and a confident feminine voice that seemed to echo with some kind of divine influence. This change was naturally unsettling, but because there did not seem to be any signs of distress coming from the room it did not merit immediate attention.

The Kamiya mom put down the remote and gave a curiously unsettled glance in the direction of Tai's room. Something WAS different, but she couldn't put a finger on it. Perhaps she should go knock and ask...

A whiff of smoky smell brought her attention back to the oven and the cookies she had forgotten to check. She scrambled back to the oven, put her oven mitts on and quickly pulled the cookies out of the oven. Nervously grabbing a spatula, she lifted the bottom of one of the cookies to see it had blackened due to overcooking; the tops were fine, but the bottoms were blackly burned. Sighing, she began arranging the cookies on platter to take to Tai's room; anything involving cooking with her was a gamble on the results at best.

Cookies neatly arranged on the platter, the Kamiya mom turned off the oven, picked up the platter of cookies and walked over to the door to Tai's room. She knocked on the door; it was usually unlocked, but opening it without knocking was an action done at personal risk of getting yelled at or shoved back out. The voices inside the room quickly fell silent, mystifying the mom further.

"Is that you, Mom?" Kari asked from behind the door.

"Yeah, I got the cookies for you all. I let 'em go a little too long, so the bottoms are burned. The rest is fine though." Yuuko replied.

"OK, Mom. Just leave the tray on the dresser by the door. One of us will bring it back out later." Kari stated.

The Kamiya mom opened the door, took one look and let out a loud yelp of fright and surprise. The cookie tray dropped to the floor, cookies scattering everywhere, and the door slammed shut again. The reason for the surprise? It was not Agumon and Gatomon in the room with Tai and Kari.

Standing in the room in place of the little dinosaur and feline was their evolved forms: WarGreymon and Angewomon. Both a test and a prank on poor mom, it was determined that both of these advanced forms, relatively humanoid in size and shape, could comfortably be maintained in human world space conditions, as opposed to the very large forms most other Digimon took beyond Rookie which obviously could not fit in the confined indoor spaces typical of a Tokyo apartment.

As for what happened to Mrs. Kamiya, she had backed away from the door in fright, heart pounding, then after a few moments peeked open the door again, eyes wide. When all she saw was Tai and Kari with Agumon and Gatomon, she opened the door fully and stared at her children with a look of great confusion and mortification on her face.

"What's the matter, Mom? You look like you just saw a ghost!" Kari asked, unsuccessfully trying to hide her giggling. The two Digimon were eagerly scooping up the cookies fallen on the floor, and Tai looked over the whole scene with a smirk on his face.

"Eh... But...?" the mom began to stutter, looking back and forth between her daughter and the Digimon near her feet, which showed no indication of having changed at all as they scooped up scattered cookies. The mom finally began scratching her head in the confusion and lack of sense the situation had, giving a look Kari would gladly have snapped a photo of had it not been for the fact that her mom would never forgive her for it. Finally, the Kamiya mom walked away, beginning to mutter something about the mushrooms she'd bought from the health food store causing her to hallucinate.

Kari closed the door behind her mom, and looked back at Agumon and Gatomon as they giggled like imps. "We got her talking to herself!" Agumon exclaimed with all too obvious glee.

"Yeah, that's very funny guys, but that nearly gave mom a heart attack! If you want to be doing this on a regular basis, someone's going to have to tell her." Tai cautioned, walking toward the center of the room.

"Oh Tai, relax! Let them have a little fun, they deserve it right?" Kari responded, approaching her older brother in a playful gesture that got her pushed away. The two DigiDestined watched as their partners, having recovered the dropped cookies and put them back on the platter (eating a few in the process), again jumped to their higher forms. For WarGreymon, it was hard to sit with the armor on in the back, so he took it off and laid it aside. Angewomon, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy "laying pretty" on Tai's bedroom floor, toying with her "older brother" with flirty gestures designed to make him react with mortification.

"Oh brother in arms, isn't this just so wonderful?" Angewomon all but exclaimed, latching onto WarGreymon with a hug that caused both Tai and Kari to burst out in chuckles.

"Um... you can let go of me now..." WarGreymon weakly replied, blushing under his armor. For all his mortification, he felt Angewomon was right, all the Digimon having regained access to forms and powers that had so long been denied by the return of the Crest powers. He had gained much by being able to enter an alternate form that was compatible with human world living, but "little sister" Gatomon had not only gained that advantage but the sense of freedom and display of her "true self" that the Ultimate form represented. This was a day of long-hoped for wishes coming true for both sister and brother...


	2. Friendship

Crest Shift 2: Friendship

Hiroaki Ishida was hunched over his computer keyboard, fingers flying over the keys as he typed a news story for submission to Fuji TV later. Even though it was supposed to be his day off, the sudden spike in activity from the previous Ankokuwa joyride had prompted a phone call from his bosses for him to write a story anyways and bring it in later. Hiroaki didn't mind the work, for as long he was focused at the task at hand he could tune out the rest of the world around him.

He liked work. It was not something he was afraid to admit, and not just because of the perks he got as a major media news reporter. Working dulled the emotional pain of the divorce he'd previously had and make him feel like he had a purpose in a world that otherwise offered him none. However, sometimes this lead to conflicts with the rest of his life, most notably his son Yamato. There were occasions he had wished he spent more time with his son than he did, reducing angst and trouble that had sprung up along the way. Instead, the bizarreness of four years ago had taken that place.

The memory of summer 1999 was in bits and pieces, much of it blocked out in the emotional angst he went to work to keep submerged, but it definitely involved him being out of work for a long time after the Fuji TV building and its environs had been wrecked by "monster attacks". One such monster, an unusual reptile thing that had apparently become Matt's protector and now a permanent resident in the apartment, was seen in those flashes of memory. Also seen in those flashes was his ex, Nancy, and the little boy T.K. he had left with her, an orange flying-hamster monster thing with T.K. The story Matt and T.K. had both told him about what had happened that summer made just enough sense for him to believe, but he couldn't take it fully to heart, "monsters" or no "monsters".

Instead, he just went about his daily business, refusing to capitalize on the opportunities his connections to the whole "digital monsters" business provided him. As both a man of honor and personally involved with the subject, he did not want to get his sons and their friends involved in exposes that were tasteless and publically destructive. His co-workers would have to earn their keep, while Matt boosted his band and Gabumon, as the "monster" called himself, stood as a loyal companion to Matt and a curious enigma to dad Hiroaki himself.

The attacks on Fuji TV itself and Odaiba College by terrorist Ankokuwas had given him the opportunity to see these "monsters" in Matt's group of friends prove their good intentions and whether the media would respect demands for non-interference. For the most part, those demands had been upheld, even by his ex-wife (who seemed to follow a similar non-involvement policy), and as conspiracy theories ran rife around him, Hiroaki could do little but wonder and deal with his personal example of his involvement in the monster business. This deal was something that grew more and more complex each day, the possibilities dizzying to think about it. Working was certainly simpler and easier, but there were just times he had to stop and face the world spinning around him...

Suddenly a craving for soda struck Hiroaki. He stopped typing, clicked the save button on his word processor and slowly pushed himself up out of his chair. He opened the door leading out of his workroom/bedroom and began a reluctant shuffle in the direction of the apartment kitchenette. As he moved, he paused by the door to Matt's room, stopping just long enough to hear what was going on inside: some conversation from Matt mixed with guitar strummings and another deep, almost-growling voice he'd never heard before. The latter fact piqued his journalistic curiosity long enough to consider knocking on the door, but he thought better of it; he had work to do, and if asked Matt would surely explain what was going on later.

Hiroaki padded his way into the kitchenette, passed the table and stopped in front of the fridge. He opened it and took a look inside, finding no soda anywhere in sight. With an annoyed groan, he realized Matt must've taken the cans he'd left in there earlier, and closed the fridge door. Grumbling under his breath, Hiroaki walked back to the door in his son's room and knocked on it. The noise coming from inside stopped.

"Matt, did you drink all my soda?" Hiroaki asked, the irritation obvious in his tone of voice.

"Not all of it, Dad. There's still two cans left in here." Matt replied from behind the door, somewhat sheepishly.

"There was a full six-pack when I checked the fridge this morning." the father warned in reply. For that many cans to disappear in such a short period of time was an unusual occurence, for Matt usually limited himself to one or two cans in a day, and the monster thing that was Matt's partner never could bring himself to have more than one every few days. The only logical conclusion that could be reached was that Matt had invited a bandmate over for some reason.

"Did you want a can?" Matt asked, deftly dodging the issue his dad had tried to raise.

"Yes, I want a can! Why else would I be disturbing you?" Hiroaki replied in exasperation.

"All right, Dad! No need to yell, one's coming out right now." Matt replied with a chuckle in his voice. Rustling could be heard coming from the other side of the door as Matt, or whoever else was in the room with him, got up to fetch a soda can.

Hiroaki grumbled under his breath as the door opened partly, a hand clutching a soda can extended out and he took the can from the hand extended out. He turned away to go back to his work, popped open the soda can, took a swig of soda... and turned back around when he realized something was off. Sure enough, when he looked back, he saw the hand that had given him the soda was NOT a normal human hand. Instead, it looked like it was covered in blue fur and had sharp purple fingernails. The hand waved, then flashed a "peace" sign.

"Matt, what's going on in there?" Hiroaki asked after a few moments of confused silence had passed, his mood having changed to a mixture of curiosity and mortification at what he was seeing.

"Whadda ya talkin' about, Dad?" Matt replied, apparently amused by his father's question.

"Matt, who or what just handed me the soda can?" the father inquired, more worried than annoyed at this point.

"Um, well, it's a werewolf... thing..." Matt trailed off, obviously trying to give as unhelpful an answer as possible.

"One of your friends is going to wear a werewolf costume on tour, and you thought it was a good idea to try to scare me with it?" the dad asked sarcastically, still annoyed at all he was being put through to get his soda can.

"Well, it's not... EXACTLY like that..."

"Then what exactly IS it? There'd better be good reason for you to have a bandmate over drinking my soda!"

"But Dad, it isn't...!"

"No excuses, Matt! Don't make me have to come in there!"

"Dad, I'm telling you it's not...!"

"I just said no excuses! I'm coming in to see what's going on!" Hiroaki stated, flinging open the bedroom door. Matt tried to warn him against doing that, but it was too little, too late.

Matt's dad ended up facing the full figure of WereGarurumon, the "werewolf" he had heard Matt cryptically refer to in years previous and sometimes appeared in the flashes of memory he had to the summer of 1999. Here, however, Hiroaki yelped at a surprisingly loud volume, dropping the soda can and spilling soda on the floor, then bolted for his room and slammed the door shut behind him. Only the roaring laughter of Matt and something like loud snorting coming from the "werewolf" gave Hiroaki any clue he'd just been pranked.

He came out railing with an indignant rage as Matt and the "werewolf" just watched and laughed at the whole scene. As he grabbed some paper towels to clean up the mess, the "werewolf" seemed to stop laughing, and by the time he got back, it was Matt and Gabumon chuckling at the scene, with the "werewolf" nowhere to be seen! Now throughly mystified as to what was going on, Hiroaki finished mopping up the spilled soda and told Matt to stop wasting his time with foolish pranks because he had work to do. Matt replied with the token affirmative, but his impish smile assured anyone who saw it he was not being particularly serious. The dad closed the door to Matt's room, fuming and muttering under his breath about how Matt was being "contrarian", and return to his work, drinking juice to quench his thirst in place of the soda.

Matt turned and grinned at his partner. "Should I tell him later?" he asked.

"Nah, it'll be more fun that way!" Gabumon answered, his normally reserved mood temporarily lifted by the combination of caffeine and impish glee.

"I agree. I think caffeine and sugar are two of the best things you could have to improve your social life."

"Um, thanks?" Gabumon replied, blushing slightly.

"No problem. Now, help me come up with a tour title already. I've been stumped for ideas, and I need somethin' for the rest of the band to work with..." Matt asked as he went back to his desk, putting his feet up and holding a pencil in his mouth cigarette-style while leaning back in the desk chair. A few moments passed, and Matt thought something flashed behind him.

Pulling his feet down off the desk and rotating the chair, Matt saw that Gabumon had warped to MetalGarurumon and was now laying on the floor, relaxing as if he was a glorified housepet instead of a canine weapon of mass destruction. The MetalGarurumon form was fairly large for the space, so moving around would be difficult to do, but laying and sleeping would work just fine. Matt looked for a few more seconds, and suddenly had his inspiration, beginning to scribble out some kind of cyborg werewolf to serve as a poster character for their "Teenage Wolves" band tour. "Metallic Werewolves" seemed to have a nice ring to it for a tour title, and so he scribbled those words over his sketch.

Like his father, Matt would work hard for his band, and for his friends. Though Gabumon was not much to look at (or talk with, as the case may be), his Digivolved forms were potent cool magnets, something he could focus on using during the upcoming band tour. And as for Dad, he could think whatever he wanted about Gabumon, it didn't matter much in the end anyways whether the truth of his Digivolutions went known or unknown...


	3. Sincerity

Crest Shift 3: Sincerity

"Ha! Kari's got NOTHING on this photo shoot!" Mimi Tachikawa thought to herself, a smirk creasing her face, as she clicked among the pictures displayed on the computer screen. Watching over her shoulder was her Digimon partner in Ultimate form, Lillymon, the two of them together trying to pick a picture from the impromptu photoshoot.

"I like that one. Let's send that one." Lillymon stated, pointing to a particular picture on the computer screen.

"I don't know about that one. I like this one better." Mimi replied, pointing to a different picture.

"Well, why can't we send them both?" Lillymon offered as a compromise.

"I only wanna send one. They charge by the megabyte, and if I run up a big Internet bill my parents will start to wonder what I'm doing in here."

"Megabyte?" Lillymon asked. Despite being a digital lifeform, she was not familiar with all the technical computer terms humans used.

"Megabyte is a million bytes. I suppose for you it would be like a million molecules in your body or somethin' like that, I'd have to ask Izzy or Willis, someone that's more into computers than I am." Mimi answered, moving and clicking the mouse to prepare to send the email with a picture attachment.

"That sounds like a lot."

"It's not as impressive as it sounds. I wouldn't know if you could even SEE a million molecules. Again, you'd have to ask the brainacs about that." Mimi stated, turning to face Lillymon's confused expression. She smiled, shook her head, and went back to her work.

Mimi held the smile as she began typing up the email. The recent restoration of the Crest power had greatly improved her Digimon's partner sociability and spontaneity, perhaps because it helped ease a very awkward domestic situation. Mimi's parents had accepted the partner, but could never quite figure out what to make of the walking, talking "orchid with teeth", as they were inclined to refer to Palmon. Also, Palmon had to stay out of the way whenever Mimi had friends over, for fairly obvious reasons. The Ultimate form of Lillymon, on the other hand, was slightly easier to "figure out".

The availablity of the Ultimate form allowed for at least some social interaction with other humans (albeit on a very controlled basis), and also to participate in the parties Mimi held. Her parents had not yet seen the Ultimate form, but Mimi wasn't worried because her parents would be slow to catch on to what was happening. In the meantime, Mimi and her partner had a chance to be the friends the strained domestic situation had not previously allowed.

This kind of socializing was important to Mimi, the de facto coordinator and leader of the American DigiDestined. The position had devolved on her more or less by default, justified supposedly by her participation in the original Japanese group before moving to New York City with the parents. Mimi had accepted the role, realizing that there was no real alternative candidate and also seeing it as making up "for all the whining I did before". The crisis in the theft of Willis' data by an evil yakuza organization made this job even more important, adding the role of communication intermediary and social rally leader. Working with the police, her leadership had lead to several "surgical strikes" that had driven the yakuza group out of the city. Now, with the Crest powers back, it was time to take the fight to them and destroy the yakuza's power once and for all.

The offensive, though, could wait a few days. After all, they didn't need to fight all the time anymore. At least, that was what was hoped...

"Come on outside, I'll show you that flowerbed Mom and I are planting!" Mimi said after seeing the email had been sent out successfully. Lillymon consented to this, mostly out of excitement of going outside for the first time in a long while, and the two went out to the backyard of the house.

Mimi's parents were already out there, mom currently planting vegetables and dad tinkering in the garage. The arrival of Mimi and her partner went unnoticed initially because both parents were focused on the work at hand, but when Mom looked up and saw Lillymon with Mimi by the flowerbed she almost flew into a panic.

Unknown to Mimi, her parents had associated Lillymon's appearance with Mimi disappearing, both from summer 1999 when Myotismon attacked Odaiba and the previous Christmas with the monsters in the city. Therefore, the mom's panic attack was very understandable. She called out for her husband to get the weed killer (alerting Mimi that something odd was going on), then grabbed a shovel and approached wielding it. Her face twisted into a "protect-your-kid" kind of scowling expression.

"Mom, what the heck is going on?" Mimi asked in a mixture of surprise and alarm, looking around to see if there was some danger she was previously unaware of suddenly appearing.

"Get away, dear! Move away! I have a shovel and I'm not afraid to use it!" the mother commanded, pointing it menacingly toward Lillymon. The Digimon, as clueless as Mimi to what set the mom off, froze in place.

"Mom, what's the problem? I don't understand what Lillymon..." Mimi began to reply, only to be cut off by another threatening thrust of the shovel.

"Quiet, dear. Everytime I see that... whatever it is... you disappear! Well, I'm not going to let it happen THIS time!" the mom exclaimed with all the maternal instinct she could muster.

Mimi and Lillymon exchanged perplexed looks, then Mimi stepped away toward her mom, beginning to explain that there was no danger in the situation. Mimi began to pull her mom aside, at the same time discretely giving Lillymon a "down" sign, meaning she should drop down to Rookie level. The Digimon did so, returning to the Palmon form, and shortly afterward the dad came out with a bottle of weed killer in hand.

"Here, Honey, I brought the... weed... killer..." the dad stated, trailing off as he looked in confusion between the mom with Mimi and Palmon standing by herself by the flowerbed.

"What's going on here?" the dad finally asked after a pregnant pause from looking back and forth in the confusion. The mom dropped the shovel, her face turning a deep shade of pink, and began to drag the dad away.

"Hey, where are we going? What's going on? HEY...!" the dad complained as he was being tugged away into the garage. Both Mimi and Palmon watched as the parents disappeared into the garage, then Mimi returned to the previous spot beside Palmon.

"Do you have... ANY idea what that was all about?" Mimi asked her partner as confusion creased her face again. The partner gave the best imitation of a shoulder shrug her plant-based anatomy allowed.

"Weird... Well, hopefully it won't happen again. Come on, let me finish explaining what's here!" Mimi said again, shaking off the recent experience like a thick winter coat.

"OK!" Palmon exclaimed. Like a real plant, it would take more than a misunderstanding to get her down.

Mimi smiled and continued where she had left off in the tour. Whether it was by accident or by design, Palmon was her perfect best friend, somehow and someway, and the excitement and joy the returned Crest provided only made that argument more sure. Maybe they weren't the born leaders like Tai and Davis were, but they did have the power of social networking and sincerity-born passion needed to organize a force and lead it into battle against the evil that had emerged in the human world. Sometime soon, she realized, her new leadership would be tested, and its success or failure would influence the fight her old friends back in Tokyo were fighting. She could only hope she and Palmon were ready for the trial that lay ahead...


	4. Reliability

Crest Shift 4: Reliability

"Oh come on Joe, please?"

"Gomamon, we've already been over this..."

"But Joe...!"

"The answer's no. Stop asking me!"

"What's going on in here?"

"Oh, hi Jim. What's up?"

"Joe won't let me go down to the bay and play around there."

"Zip it, tattletale!"

"Joe, let him go down to the bay. What's the problem here?"

"Jim, you don't understand. This isn't like Gomamon splashing around in the bathtub."

"Is that why there always seems to be someone in the bathroom?"

"That's not funny, Jim. Don't dodge the point!"

"I never have enough room in that thing anyways..."

"I can guess. But I still don't see what the problem is..."

"If you've been watching the news on TV, you would already understand!"

"...I'm afraid I'm not following you, Joe."

"OK, let me back up. When you see Digimon on the TV, do you see the smaller Rookie forms or the bigger forms?"

"The bigger forms, generally. They're the strong fighters, the smaller forms are what attracts people."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Shush you! Now, Jim, why has it been the bigger forms on the television?"

"...Because they're the fighting forms?"

"Yes, but there's something else involved."

"...They like being in those forms?"

"Exactly. This isn't a little seal that's going to be swimming around in the bay."

"...But he's responsible, right? No accidents, no problems!"

"This isn't a matter of accidents, Jim. This is a matter of a huge grey walrus with a turtle shell and hammer swimming around in the bay!"

"The name is Zudomon, Joe. You forget that already?"

"Gomamon!"

"Joe, RELAX. Take a few deep breaths. There's not going to be a big accident or anything, it'll be a nice tourist draw too. Think of the money you could make!"

"He's not going to be a circus sideshow attraction, I've already told you that!"

"That's not my point, Joe. My point is, he's responsible, the city won't mind the tourist draw and the boats will be careful if he's swimming around in whatever higher form he may take..."

"Zudomon."

"Yeah, whatever it is. What I'm trying to say is that you're worrying too much again, Joe. Let him have some fun, he's earned it after doing his duty to both this world and the Digital World."

"... Alright, but you'd better be right about this! The first incident and I'm blaming you to Mom and Dad!"

"Hey, when was I EVER wrong before?"

"Well, there was the time that... hey, wipe that silly grin off your face right now Gomamon!"

"Sorry, Joe."


	5. Hope

Crest Shift 5: Hope

"Come on, I wanna try T.K.! Please?"

"I don't know Patamon, you wouldn't have a lot of space to move around in. And you certainly wouldn't have any to fly in."

"I know, but I wanna try anyways!"

"Patamon, I'm just not sure this is a good idea..."

"Don't worry, T.K.! If it doesn't work, I can drop right back down."

"Well... alright..."

The conversation Nancy Takashi was hearing elicited her usual journalistic sense of curiosity. The day's events had lead to getting a higher work load than the one she usually had, so she expected to be going all day instead of the usual half-day's worth of work. Her lunch drop-in to check on T.K. had now become a pit stop in the race to get the story out, so she had to hurry, but her journalistic urges distracted her away from her urgency.

From the beginning, study of T.K.'s partner was an exercise in not trusting in outward appearances. How could something that normally looked like a flying guinea pig and act sickeningly cute turn into one of the more interesting (and, judging from the public reaction, well-liked) "monsters", really an arch-angel straight out of a cathedral's stained-glass window?

Images of her childhood flashed in her mind: a little French girl, staring up in awe at the stained glass and vaulted ceilings of the cathedrals seen in the tour of Europe she took with her parents long before. She had always liked the statues of the angels better than anything else, and wondered if those feelings of comfort and reassurance she had gotten had somehow imprinted on her sons. Why else did it happen that they both got "monsters" that were more like "guardians" than "companions"?

That was her past, long before: she had moved to Tokyo for business opportunity after college, and for the most part never really thought of herself as "religious" in any sense of the word. She had drifted away from her French roots, the Catholicism in particular, but maybe this was some kind of call back. Wasn't there a Catholic group T.K. had worked with during that terrible attack on Odaiba University? She would have to get in contact with them...

Maybe this angel wasn't just for T.K.'s benefit. Maybe it was for her, and all T.K.'s friends too?

With practiced discretion, Nancy approached the bedroom of her son and listened in carefully to what was going on inside. She heard two voices, one the familiarly confident voice of T.K., the other a masculine voice that seemed to resonate with power and wisdom. This second voice seemed old, though not elderly, and probably could've scared everyone in the building half to death if it yelled. It never did, though, speaking in moderated tones mixed with gentle laughter.

Nancy's attention shifted to the crack T.K. left in his bedroom door. She peaked into it; she did not fear being caught snooping because of her experience and the fact that T.K. had assumed she would've gone out again already. The familiar shape of T.K. passed by the slit of view she had, then another shape, roughly human but taller, armored, and with numerous wings outspread: the angelic "monster" that was supposed to be the higher form of T.K.'s partner. Despite the cramping such a shape would put on it, the partner didn't seem to mind the space constraints and was actively engaged in conversation with T.K.

She turned away from the door and went back to what she was supposed to be doing. It still didn't make sense why her and why her sons, the younger one in particular. Matt, with his dad following the painful parting of ways, supposedly got something like a dog or a wolf, something that would legitimately would be considered a "monster". But she never considered T.K.'s partner much of a "monster"; it seemed too kind-hearted and pretty to fit the definition.

The stone angels of her childhood flashed in her mind again. Perhaps that was the point, "guardian" more than "companion", and for the benefit of more than T.K. It was something she would have to think about at work, and something to investigate. Maybe she didn't have faith, but she did have determination for the truth. And maybe it was enough for whatever she needed to do in this life.

"Do you think your mom knows about this?"

"Nah, she would've left already. And she could figure it out anyways by her detective work."

"Rats!"

"Don't worry, I don't think she'll mind so much. She grew up seeing all kinds of angel statues."

"That's good to know."

"You can't be MagnaAngemon ALL the time, though. It's too... awkward."

"Aww, T.K.!"

"No buts, Patamon. Maybe in the Digital World, where you can fly around as much as you want. But here, it's not gonna work so well, particularly in public. Maybe some time in the future I'll let you do it, but for now there's gonna be some restrictions. OK?"

"All right..."

"Good. Hug?"

"Yeah!"

T.K. eagerly embraced his partner, a study in not judging "the book by the cover" and of what all the Digimon were supposed to do: guardian and best friend. Asking why and how was to miss the point altogether: just to accept and be glad for it, particularly now with the Crests restored. It seemed sure things could only get better, not worse...


	6. Knowledge, Kindness and Love

Crest Shift 6: Knowledge, Kindness, Love -

KOSHIROU IZUMI DIGIMON RESEARCH LOG ENTRY #42

"A lot of things now are beginning to make sense. Over the past five days, Ken and I have been monitoring the progress of an experiment involving the reactions of the Digimon after the Crest powers were restored (permanently, as far as I can tell), to see what changes unrestricted access to these higher forms caused to behavior."

"For the most part, this has been positive. All the Digimon that have a humanoid or human-sized form can operate reasonably well inside human structures, though moving through doorways and such is usually a problem (primarily because of a wing structure which has to be pulled in or compensated for before going through). For this reason, they tend to stay only in one room with their partners. The parents apparently are either oblivious or uncomprehending of this new state of affairs. Which is probably a good thing, considering Digimon are hard enough to understand even for us!"

"A pattern of higher levels in private and lower levels in public seems to be setting up for the Digimon that can do it. This is probably an attempt to balance practicality with the desire to maintain the higher form as much as possible. Again, this is likely for the better because maintaining the higher form would cause a prodigious amount of problems, though not necessarily ones impossible to solve."

"In trying to figure out where the sudden desire came from when it didn't really exist before, I consulted with Ken and a couple others about that problem. The consensus answer seems to be it developed from a combination of long-term deprivation of the ability and the 'superpowers' (to use Ken's term) the higher Digivolutions granted. Though the hypothesis certainly had merit, I countered that the Digimon wouldn't do it because of the disruptions it would cause to the human partners and the human world in general. Ken responded by saying that as the residence in the human world was implied to be a permanent affair each Digimon was trying to find a situation more enjoyable than the awkward reclusiveness that has existed up to this point. It still didn't quite sit with me, but I accepted it because no better alternative hypothesis presented itself."

"I got a few consultations in an attempt to see if the others agreed with Ken's theory. The most enlightening came from interviewing Sora, during an excursion into the Digital World with her, Ken and Davis undertaken to allow the Digimon partners to spend some time in their highest forms, which could not be practically accomplished in the human world for a number of different reasons."

"When I passed the question to Sora, she said 'They just wanna have some fun. What's the point of having superpowers if you can't enjoy them?'. I responded that it would be irresponsible to try it and that staying in the lower forms was for everyone's safety. She countered by citing that each and every partner encountered so far was a responsible and careful individual, and that they would not readily 'cause accidents' or 'abuse our trust in them'. That statement was of very little comfort (particularly after I heard about Joe having Zudomon swimming around Tokyo Bay!) and I argued that it wasn't about responsibility but about avoiding generating a public nuisance or safety hazard as accidents were bound to happen sooner or later. Sora said that I wasn't still giving them enough credit, that this was a safety valve to keep them stable in a very different world from the one they left."

"Looking out at Garudamon circling and whirling in the sky, I had to admit Sora had a point. I needed to think of it from their perspective, not our perspective. As much as they look and sometimes act like familiar Earth concepts, scratch the surface and you'll see there is nothing equivalent in the human world to compare them to or even understand them as! My very first theory of 'aliens' was less off the mark than I realized at the time..."

"Previously, Ken and I had agreed that the best way to understand Digivolution was as a hybrid between 'growing up' and 'turning into a superhero', with the former characteristic being overtaken by the latter as the levels went higher. I also remembered the statement Matt had once made to me during the time we were searching for the Crests together, that he was looking for the Crests to 'reach my own next level'. The two statements combined made me realize the Crests weren't only for our own benefit."

"Of course during that first Digital World adventure all of us humans 'grew up' a lot, so that the Crests became symbols of triumph over our failings as well as of what would could achieve, by ourselves and as a team. But, up to that point, I had never really extended that observation to the Digimon themselves. I suppose there might've been a passive acknowledgement of the importance after the sacrificing of the power to seal the Digital World, but no one really thought it through before now."

"It's long been known to the human DigiDestined members that Digivolution is an unpredictable and sometimes quite surprising process. You can never quite picture what the end result will be of a new jump, but you can usually make a reasonable guess. It's the exceptions, the 'curveballs' such as Patamon to Angemon that are particularly interesting. And perhaps they stick even more in the minds of Digimon than they do in our minds. All evidence yet seen points toward Digivolution being a highly desirable and symbolic process. Matt was more right than he probably knew at the time; they weren't just for us the humans but them the Digimon."

"At this point, I was thinking 'Well, duh, the Digimon are the ones being physically changed here!' But the change was as much symbolic and personality wise as it was physical, milestones for them as well as us. Gatomon to Angewomon, which provided a physical symbol of the changes she had undergone, is probably the best example: symbolic physical manifestations of internal change. I don't think it's coincidence that Gatomon has been the most vocal of the ones wanting the Crests back, all other factors considered."

"The observation just made above can be applied, to varying degrees, to all instances of Digivolution within our Digimon partners. In other words, they were changing and growing with us, though we may not have seen it at the time. And that's why my objections to having the higher levels for longer periods of time have lessened. It is better to let them enjoy the gains than keep them from them, but due care must be taken in this, of course."

"And not all effects have been positive. As previously mentioned, Biyomon and Tentomon do not have higher forms that are humanoid in shape or size, so all such Digivolutions must occur in the Digital World as it is too dangerous in the human world. This naturally has lead to some slight envy and annoyance from the two of them, and more hassles for the group as a whole. I am glad Ken and Davis readily stepped forward to provide the remedy they did, but ideally there should not have to be a problem that needs such a drastic remedy."

"There is also the problem of the clear 'losers' of this shift: Hawkmon and Armadillomon. As the DNA Digivolutions have been rendered both redundant and less efficient a solution, they have effectively lost access to their highest-reached forms as a result. These effects spilled over into both Yolei and Cody; Yolei seemed to accept the new fate with some sense of resignation, but Cody took a few days to come around."

"I think what happened there was that Cody is tired of being asked to make sacrifices, so he snapped at us a few times until he could process the reality of the situation. He's been spending more and more time with Joe or Yolei and T.K., and no one quite knows why. It could very well be his self-confidence is still fairly fragile even now, and he needs time with them to fortify it. It could also be he's trying to make up for his previous reclusiveness. Might even be both, it's hard to tell."

"What happened that last New Year's Eve is something that Cody in particular, and all of us in general, will probably never completely 'get over'. There was failure at the worst times, and missed chances, and we came close to losing it all. But at least now the returning of the Crest power has allowed chances to 'move on'. Hopefully, the shift proved by the Crests will remove the last aftereffects of that day, and provide the gateway to a new era. Let us all hope this is true..."

END ENTRY


End file.
